"Father of Java" Resigns From Sun/Oracle

Thrashing Rage writes "James Gosling has confirmed he is leaving Sun/Oracle: 'Yes, indeed, the rumors are true: I resigned from Oracle a week ago (April 2nd). I apologize to everyone in St. Petersburg who came to TechDays on Thursday expecting to hear from me. I really hated not being there. As to why I left, it's difficult to answer: just about anything I could say that would be accurate and honest would do more harm than good. The hardest part is no longer being with all the great people I've had the privilege to work with over the years. I don't know what I'm going to do next, other than take some time off before I start job hunting.'"

Comments

One of Many

[WrongSizeGlass]

Several of the biggest names at Sun have departed since the Oracle merger. The memories of Sun are fading fast. IBM probably would have been a better suitor for Sun than Oracle, but now it's all over but the crying.

Re:One of Many

[Runaway1956]

I dunno. Let's just say that our views are quite different. As a home user without any certifications, I manage to keep my Linux boxes running just fine using free support, available online, and in the documentation. Microsoft boxes cost a good deal of money to keep running. I hear from friends and neighbors and coworkers all the time, that they've taken their machine back to the shop for this, or for that, and forked over another hundred dollars or more.

Add up the costs of the OS license, a decent AV, all the software they purchase, and those unending trips to a shop to have viruses removed, recover lost data, upgrade this or that, and sometimes to reinstall the operating system. And, don't forget that with each trip, the tech/salesrep invariably tries to sell a newer, more powerful computer.

Cost. I'll take the free stuff every time.

So, a kernel update breaks something that I rely on. Big deal, I can roll back the kernel. A driver update breaks something else, I just roll back to the old driver. Yeah, I sometimes use the CLI. I'm not proficient with it, but a quick Google always finds help with whatever. The biggest thing about googling for help, is to use the advanced search, and find RECENT articles and posts about my problem. Trying to use a solution for a similar problem that occured in 2001 is unlikely to work today.

In short, I can build a nice computer for about a thousand bucks, and run everything I've ever needed or wanted to run for absolutely nothing. My neighbors buy computers for $1500 and up to as much as $3000, and they keep forking out money.

To me, it makes no sense.

While Enterprise' costs are multiplied exponentially, their savings are exponentially greater when they use open source. A large organization might spend ten million dollars on Microsoft license - while full Linux support is available for mere hundreds of thousands. And, as time goes by after upgrading to Linus, support becomes less and less of an issue - the enterprise might get away with purchasing minimal support packages "just in case" something serious breaks.

Whatever - I'll be a Linux and Open Source supporter forever. Unless, of course, something markedly better than Linux comes along. Unlikely, but possible. I keep hoping though!

Re:One of Many

[clarkkent09]

Typically, government regulation is what is used to achieve this, by holding businesses that violate various agreed on "principles" of fair trading and conduct accountable. Which makes the staunch objections of many to any sort of regulation all the more bizarre as rational analysis of the capitalist model would seemingly conclude that some reasonable degree of regulation is in almost everyones interest, possibly excluding the filthy rich at the top of the hierarchy of enormous multinationals.

Presumably what you are talking about when you say that the "natural tendency of business is to damage the economy for selfish material gain" is that, if left unregulated, something like monopolies will tend to naturally establish which will reduce the diversity? That's what people think for some reason, but historically that hasn't been the case. Please supply some real world examples of unregulated market leading to monopolies? Almost all examples of real monopolies have arisen due to the government regulation while unregulated markets actually tend to encourage diversity. Here is a good article on the damage caused by antitrust regulation, by Alan Greenspan http://politicalinquirer.com/2007/12/12/interrupting-the-election-coverage-alan-greenspan-on-antitrust-circa-1961/

Re:One of Many

[TheRaven64]

He doesn't need anybody to empower him. He doesn't need anybody to empower him. He could set up a lab in his garage and top engineers from all over the world would come to serve in it for the privilege of sitting by his fire, sharing his vision and building it

Given that he was one of the first investors in Google, and his investment is now worth something in the region of $2bn, I think he can afford a pretty large and well-equipt garage.

Re:One of Many

[Anonymous Coward]

Your view of Linux is that it is the most difficult to maintain an esoteric software stack in the industry today? Have you *looked* at the Windows fragmentation? Maintenance? Wanna talk about patches tuesday? Oh, and I love OS X and I've got two Macs here (a Mini and a MBP) and they're fine machine... But I can't get six months of uptime on these.

Linux *is* much more reliable than anything out there. It's neither esoteric nor obtuse nor difficult to maintain.

Your +4 interesting shows how much the MS fanboyism and paid MS astroturfing can go...

Re:One of Many

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation please? Google couldn't turn up anything obviously related to your comment.

Re:One of Many

[itlurksbeneath]

There were people that Microsoft lured away from DEC because MS needed operating system writers for NT. I hear some of the internals of the kernel resemble VMS quite a bit (even some symbols in common).

Re:One of Many

[Shadowruni]

He was given the silly interview questions. You know like, "How many quarters does it take to reach the top of the Empire state building?". He took offense to that being:

1. Who he was

2. What he was

3. He help CREATE A LANGUAGE

I've always hated those questions, not becuase I couldn't answer them, but because they don't show WHAT I KNOW, only how I solve problems. Sure you COULD say that if you know how to solve a problem you can apply it anywhere but in my experience, knowing not only how to solve a problem, but actually creating a viable solution is far more important.

Just my two cents...

Re:One of Many

[Anonymous Coward]

C# is very close to Java, especially in spirit

C# is nothing like the spirit of Java. Java was meant to be a simple language, a dumbed-down C++. C# is basically C++ with a GC instead of an RAII model, including support for functional programming and templating.

Re:Perhaps now he can admit a few mistakes in Java

[shutdown -p now]

... and making everything a class (oh - already did that one) ...

The mistake was rather not making everything a class. Smalltalk has already demonstrated long ago just how elegant the whole thing can be when you go all the way.

Re:Come on, you make money on high-end too

[bennomatic]

I think you're right. I work for a company which builds database driven software, and while we always have our eyes out for newer and better solutions, people I've talked to on the DEV team clearly feel that if you're looking to deliver millions of transactions per hour, Oracle's still the king of the hill.

Re:Larry, can we get signed types, properties and

[HyperQuantum]

Larry, can we get signed types, properties and closures now, please?

Don't you mean UNsigned types?

Re:Perhaps now he can admit a few mistakes in Java

[Compaqt]

Netbeans code completes a full word when you type the initials of a camel case symbol.

Re:Perhaps now he can admit a few mistakes in Java

[swilver]

The lack of a pre-processor is probably the biggest reason why Java became so popular. It made the language both easier to maintain and easier to get started with.

The second two you have under control yourself.

Don't want a class for everything? You can make one and use everything as static and program like in the C days.

Long names? Oh yes, I forgot, Java enforces a minimum name length of 20...

Re:Come on, you make money on high-end too

[HiThere]

Sorry, Borland *isn't* an example. They were repeatedly sabotaged by MS. I'll admit that when they eventually tried to move to Linux their offering was inadequate, but by that point they'd been so beaten down by MS that they were nearly out of business. If they'd decided not to trust MS a few years sooner, they might still be quite an important software house.

I really don't know why so many companies make the same mistake. Management just seems incapable of learning. Or maybe they just can't believe that the FOSS environment would be any different...so the initial problems seem an insurmountable obstacle. (After all, if it's not going to be any better anyway, then why bother.)

But that's NOT the same problem.